Minho woke up in his own bed late in the morning the next day, memories of everything that had happened the day before being the first thing to come to mind. However, he doesn’t know how exactly he had gotten back into his bed because the last thing he remembered was falling asleep on Jinki’s lap in the park.

Jinki.

“Jinki…” Minho called out softly. His guardian angel materialized at the foot of his bed instantly at the sound of his voice. He looked different somehow. Minho couldn’t particularly point it out since there wasn’t anything that was blaringly different about him. Still, it was all Minho could think as he observed Jinki.

“Are you feeling better now?” Jinki asked, his head tilted to one side.

Better? If feeling hollow on the inside instead of the heart-wrenching pain he had felt yesterday can be considered better, then Minho supposed he was feeling much better.

“I touched you last night…” Minho said the first thing that came to mind from his subconscious, ignoring the question addressed to him. Jinki smiled a little at that.

“No, you did not. That was a dream…” the angel said simply. Minho frowned in confusion. If that had been a dream, then when exactly had he begun dreaming?

Minho tried recalling everything that had happened after he ran off from home. He remembered tripping several times on the pavement, falling down more than once and hurting himself. When he found a playground, Minho had chosen to take refuge there from rain and his own tears. That was where Jinki found him.

Oh!

“You had wings last night. Or was that a dream as well?” Minho asked, recalling dark grey wings on the angel’s back. He did not remember details about it, but all he knew was it had looked like a halo around the angel the way it had been folded partially into his sides.

Looking back now, Minho wondered why he hadn’t taken much notice of it last night.

“No, that wasn’t a dream. I really did have my wings unfurled last night. I came straight from heaven to find you so…” Jinki faltered, leaving Minho to piece all the information together.

Minho frowned yet again. Yesterday’s events all seem to blur together into one messy memory and he couldn’t find any indication of how he had gotten home in it at all. While Minho was busy fussing over all these things, he himself realized that he was simply distracting himself from the discovery he had made about his parents.

Perhaps, that was also part of this dream and none of it was true after all.

“What do you know about my…-“ Minho gulped, not so sure of whether he would be able to carry on with this conversation once he had started it “- real parents?”

Jinki didn’t say anything for a while. He simply shifted on his feet as though he was debating internally about something.

“Jinki, please-“ Minho was cut off by the angel’s sudden decision to crawl onto the bed. Minho subconsciously moved aside as he came up to lay beside him on the bed, leaving a considerable amount of space between them. Minho shifted onto his side to cast the angel a questioning look, feeling slightly distracted by the sudden show of… intimacy by the other.

“Your real mother is the older sister of the woman who raised you,” Jinki started off. Minho waited expectantly for the other to continue.

“She was a very smart woman, much like you. She was a sophomore in university, doing a degree in literature when bad company had influenced her into doing drugs. It became an addiction for her and when the university found out, she was expelled from her course. Your grandparents tried to help her and as a result she was checked into a rehabilitation centre. She became better for only a while before she had a relapse and she was sent back. This happened quite a few times and during one of those periods that she was doing better, she had you.”

Minho swallowed thickly, trying very hard to digest all the information that he was receiving.

“And my father?”

Jinki hesitated, his expressions clouding over with unspoken worry. Minho knew that he was going to regret asking this already.

“Your mother had terrible friends, Minho. Whenever she seemed to be getting better, they were always able to fool her into a false sense of belonging and pull her right back down. It was during one of these meet-ups with her friends that she had lost control of herself and…” Jinki faltered away.

Minho didn’t need to hear anymore to know where Jinki was heading. He didn’t know what was worse about this entire thing. That he had had a drug addict for a mother, who probably forgot she had a son at all while she was busy swallowing ecstasy pills? Or that he had been born out of some random ing session with a man his mother probably didn’t even know in the first place?

A tear slipped away stealthily from the corner of Minho’s eye, running across the bridge of his nose before jumping onto the pillow beneath his head.

“Minho…” Jinki said in such a grave tone that it was almost as if he felt the grief in Minho himself.

“It’s alright, Jinki. I understand now. I was just an accident. Something that was never meant to happen…”

“Hardly, Minho. Everyone is born for a reason. It is simply up to you to choose whether you want to fulfill that purpose or not…” Jinki said in that signature soothing voice of his that proved that he was an angel.

Minho opened his mouth to retort with something snappy but all that he could do was release a gasp of air as he held back a sob that threatened to rip out from his chest. He clutched his own chest with a hand to stop the aching, burying his face in the pillow beneath him to let it absorb all these stubborn sobs that escaped anyway. He never thought that the kind of sadness he was feeling would cause him physical pain and yet, here he was trying to breathe properly despite the excruciating clenching of his heart.

Feather-light fingers raked through his hair, soft fingertips brushing his scalp so lightly that it felt almost like an imagination conjured up by his brain.

Minho lifted his head from the pillow to face the angel to confirm that he really was being touched. He forgot his tear-smeared, snotty condition to stare wide-eyed at the arm Jinki had extended to touch him.

“The world is a sadder place when someone so pure sheds tears…” Jinki said, smiling sadly. The hand in his hair moved slowly down to graze over Minho’s tear-ridden cheek, leaving Minho with the oddest sensation of never being touched at all. Yet, he could see the hand on his cheek and his brain tells him that he is feeling something from the touch.

“You’re touching me…” Minho said in disbelief. Jinki shook his head, disagreeing.

“You think I am. Does it comfort you, Minho?”

Minho chose to ignore whatever kind of hocus-pocus Jinki was trying to pull on him right now because he sees the hand in contact with his skin and that is all that matters. Minho decided that yes, it is very comforting.

Minho brought a hand of his own up to his face to touch Jinki’s hand with. He hesitated millimeters away from the skin he had always been so curious of. If he hadn’t been burned by now, then it should be alright for him to close that minute distance, right?

With his eyes fixed on Jinki’s sapphire ones, he closes his hand over Jinki’s. It is surreal, the way he is holding onto something in his hand that seemed to be halfway between existing and not. Minho’s instincts, however, told him that it is Jinki that he is touching and Minho took a strange kind of comfort in this.

“Minho?” Jinki asked but Minho barely registered it as he studied the ethereal hand in his. Minho placed his thumb between the other’s thumb and forefinger, closing his other fingers around that hand before bringing it down onto his cheek once again. Minho had to close his eyes to fully revel in the sensation he got from the back of Jinki’s hand caressing him.

“Minho, what-“

“I don’t know, Jinki. But please… Just for a moment, please…” Minho didn’t know how to complete that sentence. Hell, he didn’t even know what he was doing.

Minho opened his eyes to see uncertainty crossing Jinki’s eyes. However, he made no move to pull his hand away and Minho took